


Home Port

by EnemyMine



Series: Wants, needs and realities [13]
Category: NCIS
Genre: M/M, P2P Killer, POV Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-12 03:27:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11153277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnemyMine/pseuds/EnemyMine
Summary: Tony has the final word.





	Home Port

The last couple of months had been an overall strange experience. The work was not so different from what he had gotten used to, but everything around had been. From the hotel room he had, in absence of an apartment, at first inhabited, to the glare of that sky light. Not too mention the palpable tensions in everyone.  
Getting his orders to relocate stateside after dropped bodies in Rota, Sasebo and Guam was not necessarily that surprising. After all the latest hint of their serial killer had clearly pointed to North America. Didn't mean anyone had to like it. Him especially. 

Yes, he very much had liked the idea of meeting the Autopsy Gremlin up close and personal again after years of e-mails and the occasional phone call. Especially now that Black Lung had found himself a nice bride. He should at least meet her before they were tying the knot next year.  
He sure loved the prospect of hearing another of Ducky's long-winded stories that left off somewhere in pointlessness, before the man finally retired. Which would be sooner rather than later, that with Jimmy having passed all his examinations and shaping up to be a fine ME in his own right. From the things his friend had reported from the old home base the older man was ready to let go if it just wasn't for Gibbs and the potential bear unleashed, when the last of his old support system was taken away from his day to day activities. Not that his erstwhile superior had managed to make a lot of friends on the job.

Tony could also not deny to have been morbidly curious about his erstwhile friend of the goth persuasion. The riddle wrapped in an enigma shrouded in mystery that she also had played at to be. Not that she had not been blatantly obvious. Harmless as a newborn kitten she played at being a big bad, threatening painful death without a trace left behind. But the only time she actually had shown some claws was when her assistant had turned out to be a bit more on the psychopathic end of the spectrum and from the surveillance tapes it had looked to have been a whole lot of luck and her better knowledge of the lab.

Well, these days Abby had to live with more than just one assistant and he knew that it must grate her daily. That and the dried up supply chain of Caff-Pow and other assorted bribery. Because let's face it, that had been exactly what it always had been. Instead of simply doing her job, Abby had managed to play the teams against each other for her favor.  
Heck, Tony himself had done it on more than one occasion! Had jumped through all kinds of hoops, real or imagined to stay in her good graces. Had allowed her to feel him up more than necessary when equipping him with a wire, assuring a dinner reservation at a more high-classed establishment, catering to her eccentric whims.

Nowadays it was all about procedure and regulations. Tony had seen the memo that had gone out some years ago and all laboratories in employ of NCIS had to adhere to it. The urgency in the lab was determined by the urgency of the case. A cold case did not have precedence over a fresh one, unless it turned hot again. No matter the investigating agents.  
Not that it would pertain to Abby that much longer. There had been no hiding the interest she had shown the last time a headhunter had inquired about her prospects. Tony was pretty sure she would take the opportunity. She really should all things considered. She did no longer fit into the federal agency structure and Abby was not getting younger.  
Hungry new scientists, equipped with the latest knowledge were graduating in larger numbers nowadays, thanks to the way the field had gained a positive image thanks to movies and TV shows. Starting with the X-Files and not even ending with the CSI franchise. Becoming a geek was cool these days and Abby was no longer the biggest fish in a once small pond. The pond had grown and so had the other fish. Each headhunter could turn out to be the last one coming for her.

No matter his inbuilt curiosity Tony had been glad not to meet the goth, when he first had returned to the Navy Yard and had to deliver some evidence straight from Rota. It had been a nerve-wrecking day even without a tirade from her. Thankfully she only managed to corner him twice since during lunch breaks. Both times he luckily had been in company, which had taken a lot of wind out of her sails. Maybe seeing him with his “new” team had driven the point home at least a bit, that he was not her personal chew toy.  
Well, “new” - Tony had nearly been longer Special Agent in Charge of his own team than he had ever been a part of Gibbs'.

Something the former Marine seemed to have struggled with once he had realized who in fact had just entered the bullpen after being, at least in his opinion, AWOL for so long. Not that his erstwhile Second in Command had not had a hard time covering his nerves that early March day. It was only his long experience as an undercover operative, a skill even more honed during his time Europe, that he had not given himself away. Helped that E. J. had been there right next to him, having his six like the loyal Second she had shaped up to be.

No, Anthony DiNozzo Jr. had hated the fact that their serial killer had left a clue for his next victim to be found in North America the moment he had recognized the signs. Getting the orders signed by Director Granger to report to the Navy Yard was simply the cherry on top of a crap sundae.  
One would have thought that with him being so long Europe-bound things would have eased over a lot. After all Tony had done his best to truly move on. Had build himself a life in Spain.  
He loved small vacations at the Costa Brava or in the Algarve, the closeness to all major sights on the continent. Hell, a weekend off of rotation and he was off seeing the Brandenburger Tor or Big Ben or the Louvre. He had spent some time as a typical American tourist in Lederhosen on the Oktoberfest in Munich and had tasted something like 50 different Pilsener beers in Prague. Tony had even come to understand and like soccer – or football as Europeans tended to call the sport. His British relatives had seen to educate him on that matter. Insistently. 

Apart from the varied ways to spent his leisure time and working on his tan, the work had been good too. While cases in DC always had tended to have that political connotation, either having something to do with politicians or a headache inducing amount of red tape surrounding it, cases in Europe were either more hands on or more covert. Smuggling was a huge thing, that with the Street of Gibraltar basically right in front of them. The merchandise often being humans. The sickest cases involved women and children. Nasty business that.  
Espionage seemed to be daily business too. The Middle East was right around the corner, the former Eastern Block was part of that huge mass of land and Africa was just a couple of kilometers south. Amble opportunity for Tony to hone his undercover skills, without having to use them at the office too.

His team was great. Hard workers all of them. Experienced too. Cade was highly intelligent, but still extremely sociable, while Leven was highly sociable and intelligent. Maybe E. J. had been a bit rough around the edges, when she had been send in as his Senior Field Agent, but she had adapted scarily fast. The only thing she simply was not capable of was undercover work. She simply could not shake off who she was.  
Would have never been a problem, if only there had not been that one case where they had to improvise. Yes, well it could have ended in a catastrophe, but they miraculously had made it out alive. But then their ensuing affair had turned out to be catastrophic. Fun, but utterly insane. They ended it amicably just in time, so the work luckily never had suffered.

But obviously it were exactly the remnants of the old relationship Gibbs' gut had been picking of. And in true Gibbs fashion he was not able to simply let it go. He had to posture like the big dog in his yard. It would have been funny, if it hadn't been so sad.  
Of course the younger man had known intellectually, that there would be trouble the moment he stepped foot into the bullpen again. It had been close to five years since Gibbs and him had spoken in any significant manner. Five years in which Tony had done his best to put it all behind him.  
But doing so when 4000 miles away on a different continent was one thing. It was a whole different beast when in the same building. Obviously being on the receiving end of patented glare number three - “explain or suffer the consequences” - after not being there for that long did not help either.  
E. J. had tried to run interference, just like a good SFA was supposed to do, but maybe getting herself involved in the case of Leona Phelps had not been the right strategy.  
On the other hand one of Gibbs' rules technically applied. “Your case, your lead” - they had discovered discrepancies about Miss Phelps dealings while dealing with another case and had brought it to the attention of the director. Obviously Gibbs still operated under the unofficial rule of “Do as I say, not do as I do”.

Didn't matter either way to Tony. He was busy setting up shop for the rest of their team and getting their operations running before Cade and Leven made their way stateside, while hoping that their killer was not currently working on his next “surprise”. He could not allow himself to run around like the headless chicken he felt himself to be inside due to his old boss. But really, couldn't have Director Granger taken the time to give Gibbs a small heads up! Would it have hurt him? Or the investigation? Tony understood “need to know” and that no other team needed to know right now, but springing him on an unsuspecting Gibbs…

It was neither here nor there. Done was done. No one got hurt. Too much. Maybe emotionally frayed a bit for a while. At least Tony had not caught a bullet, which was a huge win in the books of a lot of people. The director had tried his best to break his agent out of the habit of mindlessly throwing himself into the line of fire and the mandatory psych evals, he had to undergo every time an undercover op exceeded a specified number of days, had done the rest. No more “reckless self-sacrifices as result of perceived need to impress an absentee father” or some such. Well, at least he was still allowed to talk a mile minute. The latest shrink had it called “brilliant chatterbox”. Sounded way more posh with the English accent of that guy.

Yes, Tony missed Europe. But he had adapted well to being back stateside. Falling back automatically to English had surprisingly proven tricky, despite him always having had English-speaking co-workers and all the reports and briefings. But he had loved the opportunity to improve on his Spanish, especially since it differed quite a bit from the more Mexican/Latin American Spanish he had learned as a kid. He missed the rough lilt and melody of the language, not to mention the mandatory siesta in the middle of the day.  
But America was where he had been born and bred, as they say. Even four and a half years after last stepping foot on American soil he still very much knew his way around. Sure he had lost some of his small-talking abilities – most Europeans were not for it. He had spent some weeks with a German drug smuggling ring, which had been very enlightening in regards to “communication efficiency”. He also had to remind himself that tipping rates were different here, but it came back to him in leaps and bounds. 

Before anyone had time to truly process anything really their killer had struck and since Gibbs' team had been the one on call, he needed to be read in. Yeah, his former boss had not been happy about having been kept out of the loop. Which he non-surprisingly showed by trying to keep control of the investigation, no matter that in fact Tony had not point on that case.  
Since the former Marine did not seem to be willing to go truly head to head with his erstwhile second he tried to intimidate E. J., which of course fell flat. No one working for Special Agent in Charge Anthony DiNozzo was intimidated by Gibbs. They knew their worth, they knew their authority and their limitations. Gibbs was not to limit them, no matter the number of times he glared and threatened. His bark had no bite and they all knew it.

Even knowing that time was probably a pressing matter, Tony allowed for some shenanigans by the DC MCRT. Like having Gibbs' current SFA Cassie Yates profile their killer – as if they hadn't already done that and thrown it all out of the window for something just didn't sit right with it. Tony did not have evidence of course, just a hunch, but his hunches had a tendency to turn out right more often than not.  
So the MCRT came up with Bryce Lightner. A kid who was all kinds of messed up, but no killer. The way their CIA liaison for the case suddenly behaved shifty, Tony had put his bets on international espionage. But he still allowed Cassie to feel like a thousand bucks for getting the information out of her boyfriend, while the Rota team leader rather confirmed the allegations with another CIA contact. Nothing more than a phone call really.  
As much as he couldn't stand the British bastard since his few retcon missions for Jenny back in the day, but Trent Kort more often than not had been a reliable source. As the saying goes, keep your friends close but your enemies closer. Something was off with Ray and his personal involvement with one of the investigators didn't help his case. Kort while always having his own agenda was reliable since he never pretended not to pursue his own goals.

Anyway, while the kid was still processed for being a mule for the Syrian government, Tony had taken a closer look at the crime scene photos and had realized something off about the decorations. And for the first time it felt a bit like years ago with him finding a lead and the “boss” knowing what to do with it. But what could have been a lead had instead been a clue for the next victim.  
They were without leads and all was left for the time being had been waiting for the lab results on the crime scene evidence.

Then Tony's after work drink at the hotel bar however was interrupted by an eyeball frozen within an ice cube. Nasty thing that and of course another more or less sleepless night. But at least Granger decreed his team to work the case of the Port-to-Port Killer, as he was now unofficially dubbed, alone. No more having to partner up with Gibbs and especially no more pissing contests in the bullpen.  
Good thing his team was finally complete. And the eyeball turned out to be a big clue thanks to Jimmy. Autopsy Gremlin realized that it could have been a key to an iris scanner – stating that they had such a case relatively recently. The difference being that they obviously had the whole body going with that eye then.  
On a hunch – after all there must have been a reason to gift that eye to Tony especially – the agent had tested it against the scanner of MTAC and thus narrowed down the list of possible victims to authorized personnel only. Cade was able to get the names of all those keyed in and they were in the process of cross-referencing it with all kinds of files, from HR to medical, to separate all blue-eyed people from the rest. Since no one seemed to have simply dropped dead somewhere or was reported to sport a more “Pirate of the Caribbean” look these days.

That was of course before they were uprooted with a clue leading to Pearl Harbor just a couple of days later. The team jumped a board a plane to Hawaii to interview who seemed to be a surviving victim of their serial killer. During the layover in LA, Tony was called back to DC.  
It was only after his arrival back at headquarters that they told him that it appeared as if P2P had taken his old partner from Baltimore and Gibbs, even while rejoicing in the chance of taking the lead on a hot case, had requested Tony to be brought in on it. 

With a couple of weeks distance Tony could see that he truly had needed the closure that case had brought him. It was like coming full circle in a way. Finally being able to shake the residue of distrust Danny had left him with, while taking his old Major down for something even more sinister.  
Yes, he had only seen what he had wanted to see. He didn't want to look further than Danny back then, because it had been bad enough that his partner had been crooked. Pretty much the reason why he never went and sicced IA on him. Tony would have had to jump ship either way, not being able to trust his partner anymore. He had known that another city, another precinct had not been an option either. Three police departments within ten years, people would have only seen the stats and thought something wrong with him despite him making detective at such a young age. So NCIS had been his only option at that point in time. A fresh start with a partner who knew and understood. But then came the “kids” - the junior agents and potential probies – and things got complicated. 

Surprisingly the only thing not complicated had been the personal relationship with Gibbs. At work the guy could turn into Captain Ahab, true, and he was not known to simply leave things at the Navy Yard, but so was Tony. Still, at home things had been simple, structured. The moment they had locked their guns in their safety boxes a lot of urgency of whatever case they were working fled the room. They each had their ways to decompress, to not let the cases take over everything. Tony had tended to jog in the evenings, while Gibbs simply buried himself in his basement for a while. Once both emerged they simply had been no longer boss and his second. They had been Jethro and Tony. Things had been good. Until the explosion.

For what it was worth, Danny's death had entailed one good thing. A visit to a certain basement – now weirdly bereft of a boat and wasn't that a bummer that Tony had missed the “breaking of the bottle” - and to the eternal surprise of everyone claiming to know those two, a talk about things AND feelings. It were early days, but maybe some things might be salvageable.  
For the first time in pretty much forever Tony had crawled into bed that night not feeling the usual bunched up muscles. It had gotten better under the Spanish sun but apparently true relaxation had waited for him back in DC.

The relaxation of course was not to last to long. Trent Kort turning out to be the newly minted “pirate” was a huge red flag. Of course things could not have been so easy as a simple serial killer for killing sakes. No of course it had to be a highly classified, bordering on completely illegal government experiment gone wrong. Revenge on a much higher scale. Tony only muttered a near silent “Welcome back to the Nations' Capitol” to himself during that part of the briefing. The sarcastic smile that elicited in Gibbs was another sign that they truly weren't in Kansas anymore.

Of course Gibbs had to be read in too! On one hand Tony had wanted to ram his own head into the nearest hard surface, on the other he knew he needed the reliable back-up. The moment this whole CIA-NCIS-SecNav entanglement had been obvious Tony knew he needed more manpower than his team could provide. He needed a true terrier, who would not stop at the red tape but bite clean through. In one word, Gibbs.

Good thing too, when former Lieutenant Jonas Cobb turned his attention towards the two teams, catching Mike Franks in the crossfire. Not that Tony really missed the old bastard, but he had been Gibbs' friend and ready to lay down his life for his erstwhile probie. He could honor that.

Tony still was a little bit befuddled how E. J. had come to follow the latest lead to the abandoned office building with just Cade and Leven. He blamed it on a spur of the moment decision on his part to stay behind with a grieving Gibbs. 

No matter why, it had proven to be a small blessing in disguise. Like in times long forgotten one look between them had provided them with some important piece of the puzzle. It was an ambush for the team and they barely made it in time to save the lives of Tony's agents. Cobb surely liked to play some sick games and E. J., Cade and Leven had to pay the prize for that.  
One highly traumatized SFA, who had thought her last hour had come, when Cobb had put that marker to her throat. Two life-threateningly injured agents in SICU for bullet wounds in chest and head. Luckily both men survived, but Leven would never work in the field again. His motor skills would never recover due to the brain damage the bullet had caused. Cade would be okay with some time, but he had already requested a transfer to Washington State to be closer to his family in the future. E. J. was not sure whether she wanted to remain an agent. 

Luckily her request for an indefinite leave of absence had been denied by Director Granger until she had put in some time with a shrink followed by a complete re-qualification process, psychologically and physically.  
Tony would have been hard pressed to find leverage for her to agree to such terms on his own, knowing she would try to run away from all of this. Least of all after the crappy culmination of the whole terrible case had been the revelation of her familiar relationship to SecNav, which had been the reason P2P had put a target on the joint backs of Tony's team in the first place.  
Now she was struggling with the perceived notion of “haven't earned her place” and “was not up to snuff”, which was utter BS in her direct superior's opinion. Special Agent DiNozzo might not be an utter bastard like his mentor, but he too didn't suffer fools lightly. 

So, E. J., though still somewhere in limbo, would not be allowed to simply slink away. Especially now that all protective instincts of the special agents in charge of both teams had been awakened. In Gibbs case it might have helped, that Cobb had taken Jimmy as hostage too. The Autopsy Gremlin might not be that close to him, but he was still part of the old pseudo-family. And probably most important of all, innocent and pretty much helpless.  
Well, once they had all of them back to the Navy Yard, Gibbs had taken care of the young M.E. courtesy of Ducky's hidden stash of liquid courage in the morgue, while Tony had taken the liberty of venting some of his frustrations on Trent Kort. Mainly with his fists. In the bastard's face.

In the end the two men had ended inevitably back where they had so often stood in the past. In the basement of the old house. Mike Franks had been laid to rest – and Tony couldn't help but notice that Gibbs had had the ornaments for the casket ready beforehand. 

A lot of things were about to change and those might very well be the last few quiet moments for a while. Scuttlebutt was already buzzing with names for the new SecNav and with them speculations about new agendas. Tony himself already knew to report to the director first thing Monday morning if he was taking the permanent transfer back stateside to build a second MCRT out of the Navy Yard. A lot of uncertainty since his team basically was non-existent anymore.

One thing however he was as sure as he had been the day he had left DC behind, were the deep feelings he still had for that surly bastard standing right in front of him. It might not amount to anything, but as drained as Tony was right now, he could not care less. For once in his life he really only wanted to stop thinking.

**Author's Note:**

> That's it! The series, that evolved from a one-shot has come to a close.  
> Thanks for the ride, folks!


End file.
